Bronx
culture isn't just consuming -- taking in a poetry
reading at The Point or a symphony by the Bronx Arts
Ensemble -- it's producing, as well.

That was the message at a Bronx Council on the Arts
(BCA) fete, thrown Dec. 16 for recipients of BCA's Van
Lier, Chapter One, and Longwood Studio fellowships.
Ambitious new figures in writing and the visual arts
gathered at the Lehman College Art Gallery in Bedford
Park to nosh on Christmas cookies and wax creative.

The Bronx Writers' Center's $7,000 Van Lier grant goes
to writers under the age of 30 for a nine-month residency
in poetry, fiction, or playwriting and screenwriting.
Among this year's three recipients was playwright Anthony
DeMore, awarded a grant for his piece The Sights and
Sounds of the Mute, Deaf and Invisible.

"I've applied a thousand times. I wondered if I'd
actually ever get it," DeMore, a Wakefield native,
said. "You send your stuff out and send your stuff
out, and nothing happens." Until, of course, one day
it does.

DeMore's play, originally written for one actor and
now expanded to two men playing multiple roles and backed
by a jazz-rap-rock fusion band, deals with the struggles
of black men, young and old, in American society.

Rather than a linear story, DeMore's play is a series
of scenes, like "Souljah," a dialogue between a
sergeant and GI, "Father Figure," a monologue
by an old man reflecting on his sons, and "Dealing
With Reality," a personal treatment of the drug
crisis.

Serious renderings of African American and Puerto
Rican themes have long been mainstays of Bronx art, but
there's room for more escapist forms as well.

Mystery writer Marge Mendel, an Amalgamated Houses
resident, won the Chapter One contest, a competition for
the best beginning to a novel-in-progress, with her work
about a female homicide detective, Black Umbrella. By
now, Mendel has gone far beyond the first chapter, and is
now in the revision stage of her manuscript.

"Gertrude Stein said all novels need rhythm and
melody," Mendel said. "Well, that ain't so
easy!" Like many first-time writers, Mendel depends
on a teaching job (freshman orientation at Lehman
College) to support herself.

Her enthusiasm for creative writing is palpable, as
Mendel relates the current push to "deepen" her
story and characters.

"You take them from the kernel of an idea and
build a universe around them," Mendel said.
"It's extraordinarily exciting to do."

The Longwood Arts Project allows promising artists to
have a year of free studio space at the Longwood Gallery
in Melrose, a materials stipend, an artistic mentor, and
an end-of-the-year exhibition. As with the writers, there
is also the excitement of new vocations taking shape.

"I wasn't exposed to any of that until I was in
art school," said Andrew Sonpon, a Longwood Studio
fellow who said he had hardly drawn or attended a museum
before deciding to become an artist at Philadelphia's
Temple University.

As his primary theme, Sonpon points to urban decay --
first what he experienced as a child in North
Philadelphia, and now what he has seen in the South
Bronx.

"People have a hard time maintaining their
household" after textile and other indigenous
industries disappeared from Rust Belt cities, Sonpon
said. "I try to pose the question, what is happening
to these people?"

He portrays these social questions visually, by
collecting parts of houses that have been torn down in
blighted neighborhoods for installations. Sonpon plays
tapes of interviews with inner city dwellers inside the
rooms to give their stories a sense of place.

"Having an open studio in the Bronx location, you
get feedback," Sonpon said. "From the security
guard to the people who drop by the gallery. From them, I
get to see how people in a different neighborhood are
adjusting to the same issues."

Like young artists since time immemorial, Sonpon is
his own harshest critic.

"I'm trying to get it right," Sonpon said of
his future goals as an artist. "I don't think I've done anything right
yet."

His studio mate Antonio Serna prefers the inner life,
what he calls "a bunch of caricatures of
thoughts," to social agitation in art.

"I don't normally look at things like race or
class," Serna said. "I like to strip things
down to what it's all about. Whether people are upper
class or lower class, they have the same depression, the
same happiness."

Serna's sculptures take from Mexican and Japanese
forms and "stuff I found in the street -- discarded
art."

Officials at both BCA and the Bronx Writers' Center
predicted that shoots of talent are soon to grow into
hardy plants, with proper encouragement and a little bit
of seed money.

"We know of one writer who used our resources to
get a BRIO [Bronx Recognizes Its Own] award," said
Laurie Palmieri, director of Bronx Writers' Center, which
has provided a quiet space and free computer facilities
for Bronx authors since 1996. "She said that if it
weren't for the center, she wouldn't have had the courage
to submit her work. We definitely have the riches here.
We just need to fine-tune them."

DeMore agreed that the best was still to come. "I
think a lot of new artists are coming out," he said,
"young and ambitious, with a lot to say."